The sole survivor of a 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing said at a Midtown awards ceremony last night that the four little girls who were killed in the attack “died so peace could finally come to Alabama and this nation.”

Sarah Collins Rudolph, 51, was honored by the Congress of Racial Equality at its ninth annual Harmony Awards dinner at the Sheraton New York Hotel.

Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney from Alabama, and jury consultant Andrew Sheldon also received awards for prosecuting two members of the Ku Klux Klan responsible for the bombing. After nearly 40 years, Thomas Blanton was convicted in May of 2001 and Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in May.

Rudolph, then 12, was hospitalized for three months and lost her right eye in the bombing that killed her sister Addie Mae Collins, as well as Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, both 14 and 11-year-old Denise McNair. The children were in the girls’ room when the blast occurred.